Film captures the loneliness of growing up as a military 'brat'

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, April 3, 2008

Two people meet for the first time and get to the part where one asks the other, "So, where are you from?"

The other person hesitates, fumbling for words.

"Oh," replies says the first person knowingly. "Army brat. Me, too."

It's an honorable term used by and about the itinerant kids of traveling soldiers and other members of the armed forces. Until recently, they have been children from everywhere yet nowhere, living in a culture never much considered nor understood until recent years.

Now, however, they have their first movie -- a documentary aimed at those who know the feeling of disconnection, loss and loneliness, with no hometowns and friends scattered to the winds.

"What is really important about connecting to your military brat identity of culture is that your home is not a place, it's a group of people. It's an experience. Once brats realize that, it gives them -- it gave me -- a sense of peace," said Donna Musil, an Army brat.

Musil, 47, is bringing her award-winning documentary, "Brats: Our Journey Home," to the Museum of Flight on Saturday.

The film, already shown by Musil at 64 locations nationwide, including Defense Department schools overseas, is an unblinking look at a way of life few civilians can understand or appreciate. It focuses on how growing up in the military affects adult life and relationships.

"It is about the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful," said Musil, who is from Georgia. Being a military brat "is not bad or worse or better, just different."

The film has been well-received by the military, which in the past decade has focused more on military families' needs.

A conservatively estimated 15 million Americans lived the life of children behind the fences of military garrisons. An estimated 240,000 adult military brats live in Washington, Musil said.

The state's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has for several years assigned a liaison to help educate teachers about the needs of military kids. In 2006, the nonprofit Military Child Education Coalition said kids of current troops in Washington had changed schools an average of six to nine times and needed help coping with the upheavals in their lives.

Musil credits author and Army brat Mary Edwards Wertsch's book, "Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress," with boosting awareness of military kids as a culture.

Musil was born at Fort Benning, Ga., and lived in at least nine places before she was 16, when her dad, a Vietnam veteran, died. "And we weren't even one of those families that moved a lot," she said.

Musil co-produced the documentary with an Air Force brat, Tim Wurtz of Los Angeles. The film took six years to make and includes more than 500 interviews with people ranging from 20 to 70. Singer-actor Kris Kristofferson, another brat, narrates.

While researching the film, Musil found that military kids in general are tougher and perform better in school. They are more comfortable in eclectic environments. They have the ability to talk to anybody and go anywhere, and a sense of tolerance, and racial and cultural curiosity.

Minuses, in general, include intimacy and trust issues.

"You are so out of control over what will happen to you, you learn to hold part of yourself back," Musil said.

Except for the children of police officers or firefighters, "what really sets military brats apart from everybody else is war," Musil said. "People argue about war in a political sense; these kids are just worried about their parents coming home. ... I'm not sure how many civilians get that."